Cadavers Made to Blink with Artificial Muscles

Illustration of left eyelid "sling" that is attached to an artificial muscle. The power supply and artificial muscle are implanted in the temple. When the normal right eyelid blinks, the electrical sensor (green) sends a signal to the battery to activate the artificial muscle.Credit: University of California Regents.

Surgeons made cadavers blink with artificial muscles, experiments
that could in the future help restore the ability of thousands of
patients with facial paralysis to open and close their eyes on their
own.

Some people can't blink their eyes. In most patients with so-called
permanent eyelid paralysis, the cranial nerve that controls
involuntary eye blinking has been damaged by an accident, stroke,
injury or surgery to remove a facial tumor. Many of these patients have
no functioning nerves nearby that can be rerouted to close the eyelid.
Others are born with Mobius syndrome, which is characterized by
underdeveloped facial nerves. These people are expressionless and can
neither blink nor smile.

Without lubrication from the blinking lid, the eye can develop
ulcers and the person can eventually go blind. Currently, eyelid
paralysis is treated by one of two approaches. One is to transfer a
muscle from the leg into face. However, this option requires six to 10
hours of surgery, creates a wound that can impair the body elsewhere,
and is not always suitable for elderly or medically fragile patients.

"I would estimate under 100 of those are done in the United States
every year," said researcher Craig Senders, an otolaryngologist at the
University of California at Davis.

The other treatment involves suturing a small gold weight inside the
eyelid, which helps close the eye with the aid of gravity. Although
such therapy is successful in more than 90 percent of patients, the
resulting blink is slower than normal and cannot be synchronized with
the opposite eye, and some patients also have a hard time keeping the
weighted lid closed when lying down to sleep. In the United States,
roughly 3,000 to 5,000 patients undergo this surgery every year.

To look for an alternative, surgeons at the University of California at Davis experimented with artificial muscles with six donated human cadavers.

"This is the first-wave use of artificial muscle in any biological
system," said researcher Travis Tollefson, a facial plastic surgeon at
the University of California at Davis.

The artificial muscle they used acts like human muscle
by expanding and contracting in response to electrical input. Developed
by engineers at SRI International of Palo Alto, Calif., the muscle
includes a piece of soft acrylic or silicone sandwiched between carbon
particle electrode layers. When a current is applied, the outer layers
get pressed together and squash the soft center, expanding the
artificial muscle as a whole. When the charge is removed, it contracts.

The surgeons placed the artificial muscle and its battery into a
natural hollow at the temples of the cadavers to disguise its presence.
It was then attached to cords of either Gore-Tex fabric or soft
connective tissue harvested from the corpses' temples that were
inserted around the eye. The resulting "sling" of sorts was secured in
place with small titanium screws in the small bones of the eye.
Whenever the artificial muscle contracted and expanded, it pulled this
sling, blinking the eye.

Making cadavers blink "wasn't disconcerting to us in any way,"
Senders recalled of their work. "I can understand how others might feel
that way about it, but from our standpoint it was a tremendous victory
toward a goal that can help so many people."

For patients who have one functioning eyelid, a sensor wire threaded
over the normal eyelid could detect the impulse triggering this natural
blink and fire the artificial muscle at the same time. When it comes to
patients lacking control of either eyelid, an electronic pacemaker
similar to ones used to regulate heartbeats could blink the eyes at a
steady rate. They may also design these systems to respond to magnetic
fields, either to get deactivated so that patients can sleep or as a
means to recharge their batteries.

Future research with synthetic muscles could also give children born
with facial paralysis a smile and help many patients regain control of
other parts of the body.

"There are many ideas and concepts where this technology may play a role," said Tollefson.

The researchers estimated their procedure might be available for
patients within the next five years, and they are now conducting animal
studies with live gerbils. They detailed their research in the
January-February issue of the journal Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery.

Charles Q. Choi

Charles Q. Choi is a contributing writer for Live Science and Space.com. He covers all things human origins and astronomy as well as physics, animals and general science topics. Charles has a Master of Arts degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia, School of Journalism and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of South Florida. Charles has visited every continent on Earth, drinking rancid yak butter tea in Lhasa, snorkeling with sea lions in the Galapagos and even climbing an iceberg in Antarctica.